The stock market is teetering on the verge of collapse due to the massive Covid-19 crisis facing this country. Meanwhile, the country's highest elected official is MIA on the most important issue of our time.
Indeed, time is running out to blunt the exploding coronavirus case load clogging our emergency rooms, and the decision-making vacuum at the top means there is little chance we can escape the worst case scenario: Hundreds of thousands more dead, the economy shut down out of necessity, and a prolonged depression on the horizon.
This will be the legacy of Donald Trump.
Meanwhile, the American people are voting in record numbers.
***
Back in the 1980s, Victor Navasky, one of the leading journalists of our time, asked me to join the editorial board of The Nation Institute. The non-profit institute publishes The Nation, the longest continuously published magazine in America, dating its earliest issues to Abraham Lincoln's time.
At the time Victor was the editor of The Nation, and the guiding light of a large group of intellectuals he invited to be on that board. Twice a year, I'd fly back to Manhattan to join in the discussions at the magazine's offices, which for years were located just south of Gramercy Park.
In those meetings, I listened to some of the best thinkers in our country describe the historical context of the political developments shaking our nation. One of those people was Georgetown professor Norman Birnbaum, who wove historical themes into his analysis of the badly needed reforms for America to continue the process of democratization that is our best hope for a viable future.
In his 1988 book The Radical Renewal, Norman wrote “If we are to reenact, in contemporary terms, the early American belief in a republic of virtue, we shall have to find a new philosophical basis for both social inquiry and politics. That is a matter for further reflection.”
Norman died just last year, at the age of 92. He profoundly influenced countless people, including me, and also my son, Dylan, who today is a history major and a senior at San Francisco State University.
Dylan met Norman at a Nation editorial board meeting in ~2007 when he was a precocious eleven-year-old with curly red hair. In the photo, he is at the center of the group, with his computer open, sitting next to Katrina vanden Heuvel, who succeeded Victor as editor and is a major progressive voice in this country. Norman is the short elderly man in a white shirt in the lower right hand corner sitting directly across the table from Dylan.
When they met, Dylan inquired about Norman's tie, which featured ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. Norman followed up with with a list of books for Dylan to read about that period of history.
It is at times like this, with such a consequential election upon us, that America could use the calm, soothing words and brilliant insights of somebody like Norman Birnbaum.
May he rest in peace. And may we all continue the search for that "new philosophical basis" to save our society from the darkness that now hovers over it.
***
The news:
* FORECAST: HIGHEST TURNOUT SINCE 1908 More than 70 million Americans have already cast ballots in the U.S. presidential election, more than half the total turnout of the 2016 election with one week to go until Election Day, according to a Tuesday tally from the U.S. Elections Project. The tally, which shows a record-breaking pace that could lead to the highest voter turnout in percentage terms in more than a century, is the latest sign of intense interest in the contest between President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden. It also highlights voters’ desire to reduce their risk of exposure to COVID-19 as the pandemic regathers strength heading into winter. [Reuters]
* A Divided Nation Agrees on One Thing: Many People Want a Gun -- Gun buyers say they are motivated by a new destabilizing sense that is pushing them to purchase weapons for the first time, or if they already have them, to buy more. (NYT)
* Trump’s attacks on adversaries often followed by threats to their safety (WashPo)
* Elevated infection levels stoked concerns that more lockdown measures may be imperative, potentially dealing another blow to the economic recovery (WSJ)
* JUDGE BLOCKS BID TO SHIELD TRUMP FROM RAPE DEFAMATION SUIT A federal judge denied Trump’s request that he be replaced as the defendant in a defamation lawsuit alleging he raped columnist E. Jean Carroll in the 1990s. The Justice Department argued that the United States —U.S. taxpayers — should replace Trump as the defendant. The judge ruled that a law protecting federal employees from being sued individually for things they do within the scope of their employment didn’t apply to a president. But even if it did, Trump’s public denials of the rape allegation would have come outside the scope of his employment. [AP]
* Hospitals Are Reeling Under a 46 Percent Spike in Covid-19 Patients -- The number of people hospitalized with the coronavirus has climbed significantly from a month ago, straining cities that have fewer resources to weather the surges. (NYT)
* Jeering sign-wavers. Caravans of honking trucks. Voter intimidation or free speech? (WashPo)
* The Dodgers’ Justin Turner tests positive for Covid-19, and later celebrates with his teammates on the field. How a bizarre baseball episode became a microcosm of a continued public-health struggle. (WSJ)
* France and Germany announce second national lockdowns to curb soaring coronavirus infections (WashPo)
* COVID-19 SURGES IN CRITICAL MIDWEST BATTLEGROUNDS The coronavirus is getting worse in states that Trump needs the most. In Iowa, polls suggest Trump is in a toss-up race with Biden after carrying the state by 9.4 percentage points four years ago. Trump’s pandemic response threatens his hold on Wisconsin, where he won by fewer than 23,000 votes in 2016. Meanwhile, Trump rally hosts are racking up COVID-19 fines in Nevada, and public health experts have warned that the U.S. is on track to hit 10,000 new cases a day. [AP]
* Trump to strip protections from Tongass National Forest (WashPo)
* A new Wall Street Journal/NBC News survey has found no evidence, so far, of the kind of late surge toward President Trump among undecided voters that helped produce his unexpected wins in 2016. (WSJ)
* Colorado Could See Biggest Blue Wave In 83 Years (CBS)
* The latest ABC News/The Washington Post survey of Wisconsin shows Biden 17 points (not a typo) ahead of Trump, 57 percent to 40 percent, among likely voters. (538)
* The odds are growing that the Democrats will take control of the Senate. Latest polls: Dems 54, GOP 46. (Electoral-Vote.com)
* According to a new CNN Poll conducted by SSRS of likely voters, 54% back Biden and 42% Trump. (CNN)
* Federal agencies warned that cybercriminals are unleashing a wave of data-scrambling extortion attempts against the U.S. healthcare system designed to lock up hospital information systems, which could hurt patient care just as nationwide cases of COVID-19 are spiking.In a joint alert Wednesday, the FBI and two federal agencies warned that they had “credible information of an increased and imminent cybercrime threat to U.S. hospitals and healthcare providers.” The alert said malicious groups are targeting the sector with attacks that produce “data theft and disruption of healthcare services.” (AP)
* Legendary Paris bookshop Shakespeare and Company begs for help in pandemic (The Guardian)
* Looking to undermine Biden, Trump’s campaign is pushing a familiar line of attack: unverified allegations about Biden’s son and his foreign business ties. But reporting in the New York Post, and the emergence of a man who says he worked with Hunter Biden, have raised more questions than answers, including about the authenticity of emails at the center of the story. The renewed allegations trace back to Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who has repeatedly pushed unfounded claims about the Bidens. Even if the emails in the Post are legitimate, they do not validate claims that Biden’s actions were influenced by his son’s business dealings. (AP)
(NOTE) At this point, those peddling false rumors about Biden (last news item above) are engaged in disinformation. These rumors are part of a last-ditch effort to steal the election on behalf of a man who is an openly racist demagogue. So the people passing on these rumors are themselves tacitly endorsing racism, among all of the other horrors Trump has inflicted on this society.
I condemn them. Hopefully, they will get their comeuppance on Election Day.
***
Let freedom ring, let the white dove sing
Let the whole world know that today is a day of reckoning
Let the weak be strong, let the right be wrong
Roll the stone away, let the guilty pay it's Independence Day
-- Martina McBride
-30-
No comments:
Post a Comment